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Sunday Morning News

The Florida Recount: Palm Beach Officials Plan to Look at Ballots for Entire County

Aired November 12, 2000 - 8:00 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Here's what's happening this morning. Any hopes of a speedy resolution to the election stalemate in Florida evaporated overnight. The manual recount of several thousand election ballots in Palm Beach County yesterday has persuaded election officials there to seek a manual recount of all the county's ballots, which could stretch out the progress much longer.

CNN's Bill Hemmer joining us from the state capital of Tallahassee with the latest on this story that gets curioser and curioser.

Bill, good morning to you, sir.

BILL HEMMER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Indeed, it does, Miles. Good morning to you on this Sunday morning.

It is Sunday. That means talk shows. And you can expect the highest officials from both campaigns, the Gore campaign and the Bush campaign, to make the circuit today to talk about the very latest on what's happening out of the state of Florida.

We know at this time that Bill Daley and Warren Christopher expected to be back here in Tallahassee tomorrow, on Monday morning. But as for high level talks, nothing has happened since Friday between James Baker and Warren Christopher.

However, the center of action again focuses on Palm Beach County. In West Palm in the early hours this morning on an early Sunday morning officials did announce they will have an entire hand recount of all ballots cast last Tuesday.

Here's Martin Savidge from late last night with more from West Palm.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CAROL ROBERTS, PALM BEACH COUNTY CANVASSING BOARD: I move that this board conduct a manual recount of all the ballots for the presidential election for the year 2000.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): By a margin of 2-1, Palm Beach County election officials voted to hand count more than 425,000 votes. The monumental decision was made after a partial manual recount of four precincts showed Vice President Al Gore slightly gaining ground over George W. Bush.

It was county election official and Democrat Carol Roberts who demanded the recount, extrapolating the votes found in four precincts over what could be found in Palm Beach County's over 400 precincts.

ROBERTS: They would represent a total of 1,900 votes that possibly, county-wide, would not have been picked up, and this clearly would affect the results of the national election.

SAVIDGE: The action followed a grueling day of ballot inspections as election officials scrutinized thousands of votes, turning and flipping them, even holding them to the light, trying to decipher voters' intentions on ballots that machines could not.

In the tense atmosphere, Republican and Democratic observers strained to look on. But the elections board was not united. Chairman and Judge Charles Burton wanted to consult with Florida's secretary of state before proceeding.

JUDGE CHARLES BURTON, CHAIRMAN, PALM BEACH COUNTY CANVASSING BOARD: I would simply feel better making a more informed opinion rather than a rash opinion.

ROBERTS: I don't believe this is an -- I'm not giving an opinion. I'm asking for a vote.

SAVIDGE: But a county wide manual recount could be halted by a federal injunction, something former Secretary of State James Baker formally requested Saturday in Miami on behalf of the Bush campaign. A ruling could come Monday, the same day Palm Beach County officials will meet to determine when their county-wide manual recount should take place.

Democrats predict a hand count will bring victory, not just in Florida, but in the national presidential election.

TUCKER ESKEW, BUSH CAMPAIGN SPOKESMAN: We believe a full manual recount is necessary to protect and preserve the vote of all the people of Palm Beach County and thereby help all of America speak loudly in favor of the next President of the United States. This is a good day for America.

SAVIDGE: Republicans foretell of a political process in chaos.

BURTON: I think what happened today is for us to feel saddened to watch this process virtually unravel before the eyes of the nation.

SAVIDGE: So a nation still waits for Florida to decide and it may wait a lot longer. It took Palm Beach County 10 hours to count just 4,000 votes. At that rate, hand counting the entire county would take 41 days.

Martin Savidge, CNN, West Palm Beach, Florida.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HEMMER: Now the morning after. For the latest numbers from West Palm, here's CNN's John Zarrella standing by live with us.

John, good morning to you.

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Bill.

Well, the numbers certainly did change with the machine recount of the entire county, which was asked for by the Republicans, and the hand recount, which was of about 4,600 voters in four precincts here. And what it showed with the hand recount was ultimately that the vice president picked up an additional 19 votes more. He gained 19 votes there, just from that one percent of the precincts.

Overall with the machine recount, the vice president picked up 787 votes and Governor Bush picked up 105 votes. So, a gain there as well.

As I said, that was, of course, requested by the Republicans, that machine recount.

Now, the Democrats coming out following the announcement of the move by the commission here to go ahead and completely recount the entire county said they applauded that decision because, if you extrapolate the numbers out, just from that one percent, it would be 1,900 votes more for the vice president, which would completely change the complexion of the election.

Quoting what the Democrats said, a full, complete and accurate count of votes cast in this election is the best way to ensure that the will of the people is upheld. In light of this, we would hope that the Bush campaign would reconsider its efforts to prevent hand recounts, a process which clearly would allow the voices of disenfranchised voters to be heard.

And, of course, Bill, what we've been hearing right along since we've been here is just that, that people do believe, at least those Democrats do believe that they were disenfranchised, did not have the opportunity to cast a fair vote because of all the problems with the so-called butterfly ballot.

Again, though, deadlines looming with the court action coming on Monday, 9:30 A.M. in Miami. At 10:00 A.M. here in Monday morning, the canvassing board will again get together, hold a meeting, we presume to go over the ground rules for recruiting the entire county. But how, as we heard in Martin Savidge's piece, they would be able to accomplish this in short order is very, very difficult to imagine -- Bill.

HEMMER: All right, John Zarrella live in West Palm. John will be in touch throughout the morning and throughout the afternoon on how things may or may not change down there. In the meantime, again, Tuesday night, five o'clock, is a state mandate, a state deadline to have all votes certified statewide. But again, that could change depending, again, on legal action, as John was referring to, in West Palm.

Back to Atlanta now. Here's more with Miles -- Miles. O'BRIEN: All right, gentlemen, don't go away. They will be burning the midnight oil down there, obviously, in Florida.

Let's, we've been getting an awful lot of e-mail already. As you remember yesterday, this was a popular subject. I haven't done a count yet, but several hundred already.

This one comes from Cindy Long (ph) in Vermont and John, why don't you take this first. Doesn't the risk of a hand count increase the margin for error? Isn't that way the votes are counted electronically or mechanically? Are the same Florida residents who didn't understand the ballots helping with the recount? And how are these individuals selected?

So this is a person who wants to know a few details here on who's doing it and how accurate this might be?

ZARRELLA: Well, the recount is being conducted by members of the Palm Beach County Elections Commission and the workers, the hired workers who work for the Elections Commission. Those are the ones that would be doing the recount.

Now, the ground rules for those recounts were gone over specifically by the commission with the workers and there is a Republican and a Democrat on teams doing the recount so that should prevent, should prevent any kind of mischief, if you want to call it mischief, which is what the Republicans are arguing and is going to be their argument in federal court, as well as what the viewer asks about the issue of isn't it less reliable to do a hand recount and isn't that why we have a machine vote in this country?

Well, yes and no because it certainly appears now, based on what's happened here in Palm Beach County with chads (ph), as they're called, which is the is it one corner or is it two corners, is it three corners, is it a pregnant chad, all of these new terms that have come into democracy on the punch. If one corner is punched out, then the vote counts, things that the machines didn't pick up.

So, you know, after all, it is humans that make the machines. So in some sense to have humans eyeball these probably makes sense but it's really going to be tough, tough to get a complete recount here -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Bill, do you have anything?

HEMMER: No. I just wanted to point out, Miles, that in the great scheme of things right now I think it's absolutely amazing that we are coming down to such a small number of votes not just in Florida, but in New Mexico they're saying George Bush leads Al Gore by four votes. Again, that's not complete and official because they'll do a lot of recruiting in New Mexico, but that's what this election has come down to.

I think it's important to emphasize, though, here in the state of Florida, there are allegations of fraud throughout the state, but no evidence that fraud has been inflicted here. The important point, I think, to make right now is that here is a system that is showing all of its flaws right now and many people have pointed out, and I think rightly so, that, indeed, if this election were not so close and so tight, the system flaws that we're seeing right now would never have been noticed.

O'BRIEN: All right, Bill Hemmer, John Zarrella, shedding light on the Sunshine State for us this morning. We will be checking with you later, of course.

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